Comedian: Firing Shane Gillis wasn't political correctness

I understand: political correctness was invented to avoid insulting marginalized groups of people. In everyday life, I'm all for it! I hear it works well in offices everywhere. But political correctness and great comedy are mainly mutually exclusive. How do I know this? The first joke ever recorded was a fart joke. Yet, after millennia of human civilization, there are still so many people inconsolably outraged by anecdotes about bodily functions that it raises the question of whether we've evolved at all.

Which brings me to the interesting case of comedian Shane Gillis, which some people think is about political correctness run amok. On Monday it was announced that Gillis, newly hired by Saturday Night Live, was fired before he could even pose for a photo for his 30 Rock entrance ID.

It was reported that someone "unearthed" a podcast from 2018, on which Gillis was recorded spewing out, yes, politically incorrect and offensive comments, and which even he -- in a semi-apology tweet -- described as pushing "boundaries," which he writes that he has done through his "10 years of comedy."

Some people say his firing means that comedy is being censored. They are wrong.

Shane Gillis has every right to say whatever he wants -- that's what is so great about this country and the First Amendment.

But let's get a few things straight. The clip wasn't exactly dug up; it's not old, it's from last year. The clip is not funny, because it's not comedy. It's a guy who happens to be a stand-up comic blathering with his friend, Matt McCusker, who also happens to be a stand-up comic, as they sit in front of microphones gratuitously spewing epithets and making lazy "jokes" about other races, sexual orientations and gender without any real context or substance.

This is not the work of stand-up. And yes, I listened to the whole thing. Twice.

It is true, as some have noted, that we are now living in a ridiculous "cancel culture" where disparate, unpopular and risqué opinions or actions you may have held somewhere in your past can be conjured up at a moment's notice and haunt you for the rest of your life.

But Gillis's podcast was not from his young and stupid teen years. And it wasn't material being worked out on stage. It was two guys opining on an online article about, as Gillis describes it, "comics you should know," a list of "10 up-and-coming comics," which -- to this duo's chagrin -- did not include one straight white man, but included "four white chicks."

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We learn from Shane and Matt that in the pyramid of who is funny and who is not, white chicks are "literally the bottom," just below "gay dudes."

Most of the reporting on this controversial episode has focused on the litany of Asian slurs the men used when describing a trip to Chinatown -- which indeed scans today as a pretty ugly part of the podcast, considering that the announcement of Gillis as a new addition to SNL was made simultaneously with the announcement of another new cast member named Bowen Yang. Yang is already a writer on SNL, and just happens to be the first Asian-American cast member, and also happens to be gay.

Shane Gillis isn't a writer, he's a stand-up comedian. And he "knows" from his mere 10 years in the business, as he says on the podcast, "stand-up s**ks. Everybody that's good at it s****ed somebody's d*** to get there... If you're actually smart and funny, you f****** washout. Cause you're like, 'Well, I'm not a faggot, so I'm not gonna do this.'" He "knows" that comedians who do material about depression are "gayer than ISIS" and doesn't like it that "white faggot comics" complain that they are "sad because life's hard."

It sure is, Shane. Really hard. And it's harder for some people more than it is for others.

I might be wrong, but I think it would be hard for the "unfunny" "chicks" of SNL, most (but not all) of whom are white -- like Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Cecily Strong, Melissa Villaseñor, Heidi Gardner, Alison Gates, Ego Nwodim, and Chloe Fineman -- to have to write with and share a stage with someone who has said he thinks they're pretty much worthless in the world of comedy.

I'm ready for the hate mail from those who -- like comedian Rob Schneider -- equate this firing with censorship. But it's not censorship. Shane Gillis has some great jokes in his stand-up act, and he should be able to perform on any stage that will have him, and if you want to hear how Gillis feels about all of this, you can tune into his podcast.

But let's take a moment and put this whole episode into perspective. Shane Gillis was fired because after the boss finally did his due diligence, he changed his mind. Shane Gillis was not fired because of a stand-up bit that was taken out of context -- that would be a real shame for stand-up comedy everywhere. As Lenny Bruce once said, "Take away the right to say f***, and you take away the right to say f*** the government." Now, that's what I call context.

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